Meaning
Through spoken rather than written communication; typically of news, instructions, or recommendations that travel informally from person to person in conversation. It stresses the living voice as the medium, with no document or broadcast carrying the message. Neutral register; especially frequent in marketing and media talk of word-of-mouth publicity. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The noun word of mouth, meaning oral utterance or communication, is documented from about 1456 in a Middle English manuscript, and the OED traces the underlying adverbial pattern by (the) mouth, meaning orally, back to 1340. Etymonline, working from a narrower citation base, dates word of mouth to the 1550s. The image is straightforward: words leave the speaker's mouth and reach the listener's ear, in contrast with words fixed on a page. A 16th-century starting point is therefore slightly late; the documented English record is 15th century, and the prepositional pattern is older still.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- by mouth
- word of mouth (noun)
- word-of-mouth (attributive, as in word-of-mouth marketing)
Usage Examples
- The bakery never advertised; its reputation spread purely by word of mouth.
- Before printing was common, coastal villages passed on storm warnings by word of mouth.
- Most of the workshop's clients arrive by word of mouth rather than through the website.